Oracle Provides With More Clarity Over Sun Microsystems Acquisition

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison on Wednesday exalted the completion of the long pending $7.4 billion takeover of the beleaguered software & hardware company Sun Microsystems, after the European Commission cleared off the acquisition deal.

Slamming the Wall Street analysts who had forecasted massive cuts in the Sun’s existing workforce, Ellison further divulged the plans to hire more than 2,000 professionals in next couple of months or so.

He rebuked the UBS analyst who had recently predicted that Oracle would axe around half of Sun’s workforce of 30,000 after the deal is closed and further dispelled the shareholders’ concerns pertaining to the cost of the announced move for hiring additional staff.

Ellison also vowed for immediate profitability with the growth in sales of Sun’s MySQL, Java, Sparc Unix, and its tape storage segment. Oracle laid out integration plans for Sun at a five-hour long press conference at the company’s California-based headquarters.

Of its major announcements, Oracle said it will now directly start selling to Sun’s 4,000 enterprise clients, thereby sidestepping channel partners and resellers who have been doing the job.

Its CEO also sketched the roadmap for various products of Sun Microsystems, including Java, Solaris operating system, NetBeans, Open Office, etc.

Our Comments

Discussing his approach to the integration roadmap, Ellison said: “The Sparc Solaris business is going to grow. The MySQL and Java business is going to grow. That's how we are approaching this merger”. But then, he knows that IBM and others are closely monitoring Oracle's moves.